


My Dear Ronin

by doctornemesis



Category: One Piece
Genre: Arguing, Fights, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Light Angst, M/M, Making Out, Making Up, Reunions, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 12:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornemesis/pseuds/doctornemesis
Summary: “A ronin, you say?”“Yes. I am a...ronin.”“And what, pray tell, befell your beloved master?”“He foolishly chased a woman to his death.”





	My Dear Ronin

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains mild spoilers up to the latest chapter, so heed with caution if you're not caught up! Also, I honestly can't wait for these two idiots to reunite so I wrote my own, haha.

  “A ronin, you say?”

  “Yes. I am a...ronin.”

  “And what, pray tell, befell your beloved master?”

  “He foolishly chased a woman to his death.”

  The world as Zoro knew it found itself upside down and inside out as he stood rigid and upright, hand on the hilt of one of his swords—shusui, to be precise, for comfort and the illusion of stability as he came face-to-face with a man he felt he would never see again. A ridiculous notion, he knew, Luffy’s mission had been a success, and if it was a success, then surely, that meant he would see Sanji again sometime in Wano, but he hadn’t been prepared, too caught up in the reunion with his Captain, the mysterious girl his body had shielded more than once and Hawkins strange and powerful Devil Fruit ability. And yet, standing before the chef was the one thing to trip him up.

  The gravel in his words forced his emotions up to the forefront, lone eye narrowed and unblinking as he awaited the other man’s next move, determined not to be caught off guard ever again by him or his stupid eyebrows. The man could care for himself, having mingled with enough locals to obtain the regional dress and accents, Zoro’s eye traveling down to the sword propped up on a narrow hip. The yukata he wore wove around his frame like a clear blue sky, much lighter than the ocean depths of his eyes; the lining of his chest, neck and arms a contrasting white that tied together with the sash loosely centered around his waist. The fact that a man so slender could hold so much power did not slip past the swordsman’s mind, but that wasn’t new information. It just felt...much more present.

  Evolved and aware. Confident as it grew.

  Sanji had come back to them stronger for the ordeal, and while that fact should lighten Zoro’s mood, it only served to agitate him further. What he felt could not be described as competitive in nature, but personal. More than anything, Zoro wanted to bare his teeth and cause a scene, but Law had located them through his crew, and now Luffy found himself captivated with the other Captain—distracted. A frustrating development, to say the least. The fact that Law occupied Luffy’s attention towards the back of the tea house had sent Zoro wandering in want of something to do, and in that quest he had stumbled into the back of someone when the floor plans shifted and changed around him once again.

  And there they stood, at an impasse until Sanji’s mouth had opened, curious about the stories he had heard floating around of a green haired ronin who had escaped a death sentence while delivering one of his own. Zoro didn’t like the way in which the cook stared back at him, stronger and yet so raw. What gave him the right, huh?

  “What if I told you that your master had found his way back to you?”

  Zoro swallowed hard, the grip on the hilt of his sword tightening until his knuckles blanched and numbed. “I’d tell you that it was too little too late,” he said, and he hated the way in which the other man flinched at his words.

 “ _Zoro_ ,” he said as he reached for him, falling just short as the swordsman took a curt step backwards.

  “San—Curly, _no_ …”

  Zoro needed to get out of there, his throat constricted as something painful welled up inside his chest. The sensation felt as familiar as it did foreign, and it confused him, made him afraid because he didn’t understand yet how to confront it, and he didn’t know if he even wanted to at that point. Before he had found himself separated further from his remaining crew, Robin had commented offhandedly that Zoro appeared more open and talkative than usual, and he conceded that she wasn’t wrong.

  He didn’t feel that way now, however. He felt cornered, and he couldn’t tell by whom. Whether it was Sanji, or his own mind in regards to the cook.

  The pollution in this town often offended his senses, but in that moment, as his back collided with the wall outside the tea house, he gulped it down as though he had been deprived. The alley behind the building felt liberating, the dirt path beneath his feet worn down by the wooden wagons that ushered in and out with deliveries of rotted food. The knowledge made his blood boil as he studied the various levels of injustice that carried on around them. Zoro looked forward to collecting that Shogun’s head more and more everyday. His eye slipped shut as his head settled back against the wall, chest rising and falling in steady waves as he centered himself.

  Too bad it wouldn’t last.

  “Marimo!”

  Zoro’s lone eye snapped open in an instant, peering to the left of him as Sanji stormed out of the building after him, his rage written in the flush of his cheeks and his balled up fists. Zoro growled, low and menacing and hurt, like a wounded animal who wished only to be left alone to lick his wounds and fend off death. Why couldn’t Sanji understand he needed to stay away? That Zoro didn’t know what to do or say, and so that made the situation all the more dangerous bordering on explosive. Zoro didn’t want to react, didn’t want to engage in this just yet.

  “Don’t ignore me, you bastard!” he shouted, reaching for Zoro once again as his palms connected with his shoulders, shoving him back as he crowded him in.

  “Don’t come at me like your anger’s righteous, cook,” he bit, not meeting the other man’s heated gaze.

  “Look at me, you shitty bastard! I...Zoro, I’m _not_ the same,” he said, as though he were offering a warning to the other man. As if Zoro _needed_ one.

 “Neither am I!” Fuck. There went that plan.

  The gentle scent of sweat cut with cigarette smoke wafted its way through his nostrils, drawing him closer against his will. Zoro told himself that he hadn’t missed that smell, distinctive to the cook and the cook alone, but it didn’t stop his tongue from trailing across his bottom lip, nor the curious blue eye that followed its path. Zoro determined that he must, at all cost, retain his pride in this matter, but his composer had already begun to slip the second he realized the stranger he had bumped into wasn’t a stranger at all.

  Or was he?

  “I... _Fuck_ , Zoro. Do you hate me?” he questioned, chewing on his bottom lip with no cigarette to entertain his mouth as his fingers trailed down from the swordsman’s shoulders before digging into his biceps. He was being unusually handsy, and Zoro wondered, fleetingly, if it had anything to do with him not wearing pants.  

  “I don’t know,” Zoro said, the words out of his mouth before he could think better of it. “I _don’t_ know.”

  The anger that corrupted the cook’s face didn’t seethe with rage, but with hurt. Sanji must have wanted him to understand that his actions were in the best interest of their nakama, but Zoro couldn’t do it, even if he did. Sanji didn’t ask Luffy to follow after him and bring him back; Luffy did that all on his own, and maybe, _maybe_ the fact that the cook was content to be sold off by his family instead of asking for help was what pissed Zoro off the most. In fact, Zoro didn’t want to think about it at all or how it made him feel because all it served to do was render his mind into tiny, complicated pieces _.”You left!”_ his mind wanted to scream, over and over again, but he couldn’t force himself to say it out loud because then that would make him selfish and a tad bit possessive.

  “You know, my bounty went up, you shitty swordsman! I’m at a higher bounty than you right now,” he said, a lopsided grin planted on his face as he aimed to get a rise out of the other man. Normally, it was the other way around. Clearly, Sanji didn’t intend to let him get away so easily.

  “Only because I’ve been stuck here, shit cook,” he said, arms crossed as Sanji’s hands refused to remove themselves from his person. “Can’t collect a bounty if I can’t fight, now can I?”

  “Excuses, excuses.”  

  Zoro bared his teeth as he snarled, the sensation of it rumbling around inside his chest. “Oh, yeah, shit cook?! You’ve got a sword there, why don’t you draw it, and we’ll see how well you stack up against me!” he hollered, getting in Sanji’s face as the last cords of his resolve began to splinter and break off, one by one. “Oh, but wait, you’re too much of a coward to use your hands for anything more than cooking or proposing to the numerous women you chase around like an idiot!”

  “Do you think this was some sort of fucking vacation for me, marimo?!” he shouted, voice much louder than it had been just a few moments prior. Zoro had struck a chord, he realized, as Sanji drew the weapon at his hip, though it remained half-sheathed for the time being. “If I didn’t comply, they were going to kill my old man! My _real_ old man! They would have killed Chopper, Nami, Brook and Momonosuke after we barely escaped Doflamingo's assault on The Sunny! You guys were still fighting at Dressrosa, and...and what if Big Mom’s crew came after you guys right after one of the biggest battles we’ve had to date, huh?! What was I supposed to do that would have made you happy?!”

  ‘You could have asked for help!’ his brain screamed, his head pounding.

  “Draw. Your. Sword,” he gritted, fighting himself at every turn to keep up the wrath, the struggle. “You stupid, sacrificial lamb!”

  The dam broke, or so the saying went. The confined space limited their movements, but that didn’t stop Zoro or Sanji from coming at each other full force. Zoro grunted, impressed with Sanji’s speed and how he handled the blade with finesse unlike Luffy’s sideshow experiment earlier. Sanji knew what to do, knew the basics at least, but his arms lacked the strength that his legs carried, but his fine footwork kept him upright and on the defensive. In the end, Zoro gained the upper hand as predicted, but Sanji refused to back down, breathing hard as his chest rose and fell in rapid succession, his bangs plastered against his forehead in a sweaty heap.

  Zoro swore he could hear the other man’s pounding heart, but chalked it up to wishful thinking.

  “You could have asked for help,” he said, at last. Sanji’s visible eye widened in disbelief, but he kept his guard up, katana blocking Zoro’s from coming down any closer towards his throat. “You _should_ have asked for your captain’s help instead of assuming we would all be fine carrying on without you. You’re _not_ replaceable.”

  “I didn’t want to put _any_ of you in danger,” he said, teeth grinding together. “You remember what happened with Kuma because I sure as hell do! And fuck, Zoro...I didn’t come here looking to fight with you! I just, Nami said you’d been upset and I wanted to clear the air between us.”

  Zoro took a calming breath, holding it for a second or two to steady himself and clear his thoughts. Determined then not to turn back, he instead pressed forward. “The Sunny and its crew is where you belong, right? Tell me where you belong, cook,” he said, his voice deep but tranquil now that he had made up his mind.

  “I belong wherever my nakama are...wherever _you_ are,” Sanji said, his gaze never wavering as he bit his bottom lip again.

  Zoro didn’t know if it was the cook’s words and how he had said them or if it happened to be the way in which Sanji’s teeth dug into the soft flesh of his full mouth, but he felt compelled to press forward, closer until the swordsman could feel the other man’s warm breath ghosting across his face. Sanji’s breath smelled of green tea mixed with something subtle yet sweet. “Good,” he said, words slow to come by as he suddenly felt inebriated. “You’re stronger now, I can feel it, and we need that strength. I _need_ that strength by my side.”

  “Zoro…”

  Before Sanji could say anything idiotic to undermine himself or the situation, Zoro closed the distance between them, shielding the cook’s mouth with his own in a hard press of lips on lips. The sword once grasped in Sanji’s grip clattered to the ground beneath them as both of his arms wrapped around the swordsman’s neck, bringing their bodies closer together as Zoro shoved him back against the opposing wall, pulling Sanji’s bottom lip in between his teeth, delighting in the low moan it pulled forth from the other man’s throat. Sanji’s tongue massaged his as one of those dangerous legs of his pressed in between Zoro’s thighs, rubbing none too gently. One of Zoro’s hands busied itself in the blonde tresses of Sanji’s hair, the other winding its way down along his spine before grabbing a handful of the cook’s perfect ass, giving it a firm squeeze. Sanji groaned into Zoro’s mouth, causing a wicked smirk to crossover his face, a pleased sort of sound keening in his throat as one of Sanji’s hands moved to palm over the swordsman’s groin, drawing a rather embarrassing noise from him that sounded somewhere in between a whimper and a whine.

  “Fuck, _San-ji_ ,” he groaned as the pair were forced to break apart for air, their hands continuing to explore and caress each other’s bodies in a manner they never had before as if trying to reassure themselves that this was reality.

  “Yeah,” he breathed, licking his lips as if to savor Zoro’s taste as he ran his fingers through his hair, exposing both eyes before recognizing his mistake, his cheeks flooding with warmth as Zoro halted him from hiding beneath the side-long fringe. Before Zoro could process his own actions, he had placed a gentle kiss above each of Sanji’s eyebrows, pleased by how flustered Sanji appeared as a result. “Oi, marimo, what the hell was that?!”

  “You loved it,” Zoro said, pressing a tender kiss to one corner of Sanji’s mouth as the other man sought out his lips with his own, the two making a game of it as he skimmed his teeth along the side of the blonde’s neck, causing him to cry out while simultaneously bucking his hips forward. Zoro hummed at the response, filing the information away for later use.

  “How indecent!” came a small shriek as both Zoro and Sanji’s heads snapped to the left of them.

  Zoro choked as Tama came into view, Sanji shoving him back and away as though he were set ablaze by their proximity alone. “What can we do for you, O-Tama?” he inquired, keeping his gaze leveled and his features neutral as he crossed his arms over chest.

  The girl tilted her head to one side, hands on either hip as she studied them with an intensity that made Zoro want to crawl into some filthy hole somewhere to die. “For me? Absolutely nothing! But Luffytaro’s looking for you!” she said before skipping away.

  “Luffy...taro?” Sanji repeated, chuckling low as he cocked a lone brow in Zoro’s general direction, some of the embarrassment he felt begging to drain away from his cheeks.

  Zoro sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. “It’s a long story,” he said, his brows furrowed as he took in Sanji’s appearance one last time, enjoying how at ease and confident he carried himself now. Sanji chewed on his bottom lip once more, and Zoro found himself once again distracted by the action.

  The man needed to find a pack of smokes, and fast.

  “We’ll, uh, continue this later then, yeah?”

  Zoro pulled Sanji forward by the front of his yukata, pressing a rough, short kiss against his mouth before using all his remaining willpower to break free. “Once I’m done with you, you won’t be able to remember anything but my name,” he promised, the grin that stretched across his face borderline predatory as Sanji shuddered at his words.

  Robin would be proud, Zoro thought as he and Sanji made their way back inside the teahouse, greeted by their captain who placed an outstretched arm across each of their shoulders, bringing them in close for a warm embrace. The three of them laughed as Zoro and Sanji’s eyes met, lingering upon each other with a renewed sense of wonder and desire. If Zoro were a ronin, he would be masterless no more, and the idea suited him just fine as the four of them set to work on their next plan due to Law’s insistence, never mind the fact that Luffy would either forget or completely disregard everything stated moving forward. Zoro felt whole again now that both his captain and his cook were back by his side, sparing Sanji a longing glance as the blonde’s hand rubbed soothing circles along his inner and outer thigh. Zoro felt ravenous the closer his opportunity to fight a new opponent worthy of both his time and skill drew closer, and while that longing hadn’t diminished in the slightest, he now found himself equally as excited about getting another chance to kiss the cook again.

  “Hey, marimo,” Sanji said, voice even with a hint of annoyance laced underneath as his hand dared to slide further up along Zoro’s thigh. “I’ve got some errands to run later, so how about you make yourself useful and come help me.”

  The glint in the swordsman’s eye promised payback to come, but he smiled nonetheless. “Whatever, dart-brow. I can handle anything you throw my way, just tell me when and where,” he said, taking a long draught of his booze to keep from groaning out loud as Sanji’s hand grew more and more brazen.

  “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”   

    

 

   

 

          


End file.
